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From: aikeena@my-deja.com
Newsgroups: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.magick,alt.pagan.magick
Subject: Re: Crowley's Failure as a Magician/Mystic (was something else)
Date: Sat, 08 Jul 2000 18:53:51 GMT
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In article <3966B081.4F88@sympatico.ca>,
kteis@sympatico.ca wrote:
> Then how else is such attainment
measured?
> Frater X announces he has become
a "babe of the abyss", for which no
> reasonable test exists.
> Assume that (not uncommonly) the temple
which he is a member of boasts
> no individual with a grade even close.
> Who will make the judgement, without
actual understanding of the grade
> claimed?
> Hardly.
> This suggests that the "man on the
Clapham omnibus" is capable of
> jusging whether Frater X has crossed the
abyss.
> This is a normative approach no different
than that which currently
> exists: the only difference is that to date no
judges have been
> appointed.
> If a person must have an understanding of
high initiation to judge, then
> who can possibly claim to judge the
judges?
I should point out that their has been a fairly
widespread if informal way of judging the
brilliance of others in the realm of science for
quite some time.
Generally, the more pragmatic and
productive of useful results a scientist can
produce while (with no "tricks") stupefying and
being incomprehensible to other scientists ...
even with the reasoning process explained...
then the more "advanced" they are judged to
be.
In this case, its intuitively understood that
genius may well be beyond the abilities of
lesser mortals to appreciate ... and thus the
less one is able to comphrehend the genius
while at the same the more useful the results
and insights therefore the more advanced
the genius.
It's based upon incomphrehensibility rather
than comphrehensibility.
It was in this way that for instance Schwinger
and Feynman were "judged" by the body of
physicists. Both produced particularly
advanced and terrifying mathematical and
physical insights. Because Schwinger's was
more mathematically formal, it was at first
favored by Oppenheimer and the physics
establishment.
But Dylan (who is still alive and kicking btw)
popularized the Feynman QED method by
demonstrating its relative ease of calculation,
and thus its "usefullness". Eventually history
and the scientific community chose to laud
Feynman over Schwinger (not only for this
reason). Feynman's method was "better" not
because it was mathematically "easier" but
finally because it was realized that his genius
or insight had made a certain degree of
tortuous mathematics *unnecessary*.
The essential problem in magic is that very
few people are interested in pragmatic
applications. When all you're talking about is
subjective states of realization, then yes
things are going to be messy in evaluation.
This is why, to me, all this discussion of
grades is utter bollocks and nonsense. What
do I care if Crowley made Ippissumus? What
good does it do *me*? I'm not talking about
merely material rewards here, a clarified and
improved methodology of altering
consciousness would for instance qualify for
me as a pragmatic and applied result of
insight.
And before anyone retorts about this being a
limiting state of mind, let me remind them
that Crowley was the one that wrote "magick
is for all".
In science, there are quite allot of big egos.
But before other scientists kowtow to them,
usually they have the nerve to ask "so exactly
what did *you* do that was all that great?".
nguyen
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